Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 09:47:51 +0500
From: ghmcleaf{CONTRACTOR/ASPEN/ghmcleaf}%NAC-GATEWAY.ASPEN@ace.aspensys.com


                     AIDS Daily Summary
                        May 31, 1995

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National AIDS
Clearinghouse makes available the following information as a public
service only. Providing this information does not constitute endorsement
by the CDC, the CDC Clearinghouse, or any other organization. Reproduction
of this text is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC
Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information.
Copyright 1995, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD


************************************************************
"The Positive Side of HIV"
"Palliative Care for AIDS on Life Support"
"Interim Chief of D.C. Ambulance Bureau Quits"
"The Reliable Source"
"AIDS Toll Changes Behaviour in Thai Villages"
"Abbott Files SNDA for Clarithromycin in Prevention of
AIDS-Associated Infection"
"Red Cross Finishes Blood Lab Upgrade"
"Mitochondrial Toxicity of Antiviral Drugs"
"Award for Failure to Diagnose AIDS Upheld"
"Helping People Survive"
"In a New Light: Sex Unplugged"
************************************************************

"The Positive Side of HIV"
Washington Post (05/31/95) P. B1;  Sherrill, Martha
     Mary Fisher--who has been HIV-positive for at least four
years--is living life fully with an upbeat, positive attitude.
In her house in Bethesda, Md., for example, she has installed a
giant train set that runs through several rooms and up the
stairs.  Three summers ago at the Republican National Convention
in Houston she told millions of people that she was infected.  Of
her enormous impact at the convention, Fisher says, "I was
common.  I was one of you--a woman, a mom--and I wasn't
separating myself from the gay community either."  Since then,
Fisher has founded the Family AIDS Network, which supports the
caregivers of AIDS patients; her memoirs, entitled "My Name Is
Mary," are due out this fall.  Fisher's focus on AIDS awareness
means that she is always looking to talk with the people who need
to hear it most.  "She reaches a whole group who wouldn't hear it
from me," says AIDS activist Larry Kramer.  "She works from her
heart."

"Palliative Care for AIDS on Life Support"
Toronto Globe and Mail (05/30/95) P. A2;  Picard, Andre
     More than 1,100 caregivers traveled to Montreal last week to
attend the International Conference on Home and Community Care
for Persons Living with HIV-AIDS.  Although the meeting was
timely, the provincial government's plans to shift to community
care were met with some skepticism.  "What is worrisome about
this shift in responsibility is that it isn't clear there will be
a shift in funding to go along with it," said Raymond Arseneault,
director-general of Montreal's Maison du Parc, a model in the
palliative-care field.  It costs the non-profit hospice about
$100 a day to care for one advanced AIDS patient, compared to
almost $1,000 a day in a hospital.  Nine people live at Maison du
Parc, and nearly 100 people in the advanced stages of AIDS are on
the waiting list.  Still, Maison du Parc has five empty beds.  It
receives $45 per day for up to nine residents, but after nine it
is reclassified as a commercial establishment.  Then the costs
increase, while the subsidy falls to $13 per patient per day.
Only 3 percent of AIDS patients have access to palliative care,
compared with 5 percent for other illnesses, according to
research presented at the conference.

"Interim Chief of D.C. Ambulance Bureau Quits"
Washington Post (05/31/95) P. D3;  Goldstein, Amy
     After just nine months, Georges C. Benjamin, the interim director
of the District of Columbia's ambulance bureau, has resigned to
become the senior administrator in Maryland's Department of
Health and Mental Hygiene.  As deputy secretary for public health
services, Benjamin will oversee one-third of the department's
$3.2 billion budget.  Benjamin leaves behind a $15 million
emergency medical system that has improved its speed and
reliability in recent years, but is currently having difficulty
keeping the ambulance fleet operational.  In his new position,
Benjamin will be in charge of policies and services concerning
AIDS, mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, and developmental
disabilities.  He will also work with local health departments
and direct efforts to track the pattern of diseases among
Maryland residents.

"The Reliable Source"
Washington Post (05/31/95) P. B3;  Romano, Lois
     Last Friday night, at the American Foundation for AIDS Research
dinner and auction in Cannes, Saudi Arabian Prince Waleed bin
Talal bin Abdulaziz paid $20,000 for model Naomi Campbell's
diamond and emerald navel ring but decided to let her keep it.

"AIDS Toll Changes Behaviour in Thai Villages"
Reuters (05/29/95);  Wannabovorn, Sutin
     In northern Thailand, as many as 10 people die from AIDS each
day, reported health workers on Monday.  "At least six people
from our [AIDS support group] are dying every day so I believe
that the figure for the whole province would be up to 10," said
Suphan Thongkerd, a worker at the New Life Club support group.
One beneficial effect of the high death rate is that people have
started to change their risky behavior, said Prue Borthwick of
the private Northern AIDS Prevention and Care organization.
"Partly that's a result of the government campaign but partly
it's the result of their own experiences," he noted.  The
government has launched an aggressive public awareness campaign
in the mass media, schools, and work places to alert people to
the danger of HIV.  The country's northern six provinces are
among the regions hardest hit by the rapid spread of the disease
because of both intravenous drug use and the sex industry, health
workers say.

"Abbott Files SNDA for Clarithromycin in Prevention of
AIDS-Associated Infection"
PRNewswire (05/30/95)
     Abbott Laboratories has filed a Supplemental New Drug Application
(SNDA) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for marketing
approval for the use of clarithromycin (Biaxin) in the prevention
of disseminated Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) disease in
patients in the advanced stages of HIV infection.  Clinical trial
results show that clarithromycin may help prevent the onset of
disseminated MAC, the most common systemic bacterial infection in
patients with advanced AIDS.  Prophylactic use of the drug
reduced the incidence of disseminated MAC by nearly 70 percent
among the 667 patients in the intent-to-treat group of a
double-blind, placebo-controlled study in the United States and
Europe.  Clarithromycin is used for the treatment of various skin
and respiratory infections, including pneumonia and acute
exacerbation of chronic bronchitis.

"Red Cross Finishes Blood Lab Upgrade"
Reuters (05/30/95)
     On Tuesday, the American Red Cross announced that it had opened
its ninth and final new "mega-lab" that exceeds current blood
regulatory safety standards.  The national testing centers screen
all the blood donated to the organization for infectious agents
such as AIDS and some forms of hepatitis.  The new
laboratory--located in Portland, Ore.--is part of a Red Cross
program to consolidate all infectious disease testing from 50
labs to nine national ones.  The labs, which operate 24 hours a
day, provide test results within 17 hours and can send them via
computer to local Red Cross centers.

"Mitochondrial Toxicity of Antiviral Drugs"
Nature Medicine (05/95) Vol. 1, No. 5, P. 417;  Lewis, William;
Dalakas, Marinos
     Short-term therapy with antiviral nucleoside analogues (ANAs)
appears to be relatively safe, but long-term therapy can produce
toxic effects, write William Lewis and Marinos C. Dalakas in
Nature Medicine.  ANAs include acyclovir, zidovudine (AZT),
zalcitabine (ddC), didanosine (ddI), and stavudine (D4T).
Features of toxicity indicate that defective mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) replication may be to blame.  For example, AZT
mitochondrial myopathy is found in up to 20 percent of long-term
AZT-treated AIDS patients.  Symptoms of the disorder are
associated with defective mitochondrial gene expression and with
ANA triphosphates' inhibition of mitochondrial DNA polymerase in
the target tissues.  At first, ANA toxicities to diverse target
tissues--such as cardiac and skeletal muscle--do not show a clear
pattern linking features of the illnesses.  To address this, the
authors propose a hypothesis which states that the manifestations
of ANA toxicity in selected tissues reflect the combined effects
of four principal factors--including the ability of the ANA
triphosphate to inhibit DNA polymerase either by serving as a
competitive alternate substrate and incorporating into mtDNA, or
by terminating the nascent mtDNA chain non-competitively.  By
understanding mtDNA replication, more effective ANAs may be
designed for antiviral therapy.

"Award for Failure to Diagnose AIDS Upheld"
American Medical News (05/08/95) Vol. 38, No. 18, P. 22
     As part of a failure-to-diagnose case, a Louisiana appellate
court upheld a $700,000 award to a female AIDS patient.  The
woman, who contracted HIV in 1980, was diagnosed with AIDS in
November 1990.  She had consulted with her doctors in August
1990, but at that time they did not diagnose her with either AIDS
or HIV.  The woman sued her physicians, claiming the failure to
diagnose had cost her one year of AIDS-free life; one year of
life expectancy; and one year of ability to work.  She settled
with her doctors for $100,000 and was awarded more than $700,000
in additional damages from the Patients Compensation Fund.  On
appeal, the doctors acknowledged their negligence in failing to
diagnose the disease.  The court reduced the woman's award for
medical expenses from $313,000 to $77,000.  Because she had a
progressive and terminal disease, ruled the court, not all of her
medical expenses should have been attributed to the negligence.

"Helping People Survive"
Federal Times (05/22/95) Vol. 31, No. 15, P. 20;  Carr, Eve
     As an employee of the Federal Drug Administration's (FDA's)
office of external affairs, Dr. Randy Wykoff's job is to reach
out to the general public.  On any given day, Wykoff--the
associate commissioner for AIDS and Special Health Issues at the
FDA in Rockville, Md.--deals with representatives from consumer
or patient advocacy groups; the media; Congress; and concerned
family members of patients who have AIDS, Alzheimer's, or cancer.
However, one of the common misconceptions about the
agency--according to Wykoff, is that it conducts clinical trials
or invents or discovers drugs.  "We're a scientific agency that
looks at data submitted by other people, and we make a decision
based on those data whether a drug looks promising or not," he
explains.  Because of the FDA's public-outreach efforts, Wykoff
says that the medical and scientific community is more able to
understand patients and respond accordingly.  AIDS activists, for
example, have clearly stated where they will and will not take
risks in the drug approval process and have provided a useful
perspective.  Feedback from these and other groups also brings an
immediacy to the issue at hand.

"In a New Light: Sex Unplugged", Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (5/23/95)
     Thursday night, June 1st from 8-9 pm ET, ABC-TV is
presenting the fourth annual "IN A NEW LIGHT," a public
information outreach special.  This year's show is subtitled,
"SEX UNPLUGGED" and will deal with the pressure that young people
feel to become sexually active.  The show focuses on teenagers
who have chosen abstinence, decided to postpone sex, or are
sexually active and are protecting themselves. Special events are
being planned in communities across the country in coordination
with the airing of the primetime telecast.  Contact the CDC
National AIDS Hotline (800) 342-2437) for additional information,
receive an information packet and to register your viewing event.
You may also call the CDC National AIDS Clearinghouse at (800)
458-5231 to have the packet faxed to you on NAC FAX.